FILM REVIEW / REVIEW – Remake of the Japanese film “Don’t Cut!” (2019), “Cut!” is an opportunity for Michel Hazanavicius to pay homage to broke zombie films.
A zombie comedy by Michel Hazanavicius
With The Artist (2011), Michel Hazanavicius paid homage to Hollywood cinema. A work that allowed the French director to fly to the United States to receive five Oscars (including best film and best actor for Jean Dujardin). More than ten years later, the filmmaker once again puts cinema in the spotlight in Cut!. But in another genre, less glorious, without rhinestones and sequins. Here he takes us discovering the world of Z series as bloody as they are messy.
It all starts with a young woman who is attacked by a zombie. Then, a tyrannical director enters the scene to rot his team. A big anger during which Romain Duris announces the color ofan exceptional performance.
Barely time to come to their senses, that performers and make-up artist are really attacked by a living dead! Is this reality? Is it the continuity of the filming? Where is the real, where is the fake? During this long sequence shot particularly badly played (deliberately), Michel Hazanavicius manages to create doubt in the viewer. Will he offer us a clumsy film bordering on embarrassing, or one of the funniest French comedies in a long time?
The extreme humor of Cut!
It is obviously the second choice which is essential after a first part already filled with hilarious moments. Both visually and through replicas of Bérénice Béjo (also grandiose) destined to become cult. Michel Hazanavicius had done well from this point of view with OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies (2006) and its sequel Rio no longer responds (2009).
While adopting another style with Cut!he proves again that he can be an excellent dialogist (he had co-signed those ofOSS 117 with Jean-Francois Halin). Thus, even if its initial concept comes from the Japanese film Don’t cut! (2019) by Shin’ichirō Ueda, including Cut! is a very faithful remake while adding a meta element, the adaptation of the dialogues and the dynamism of the feature film are indeed to be attributed to the French filmmaker. Without forgetting performances to cry with laughter from the rest of the cast: Matilda Lutz, Finnegan Oldfield, Sébastien Chassagne, and special mention to Grégory Gadebois and Jean-Pascal Zadi.
Behind the chaotic scenes of a genre film
We know that Michel Hazanavicius has serious knowledge of cinema. And he never ceases to have fun with his references. From there to consider himself as the French Quentin Tarantino? Not really. But Michel Hazanavicius can at least afford a nice nod, by decking out a “Tarantino” t-shirt for the daughter of the failed director played by Romain Duris. However, Cut! does not seek so much to honor series Z films, as behind the scenes and the craftsmen of these broke films.
A way of insisting on the fact that, in the surrounding chaos, where improvisation and resourcefulness are the key words, the human comes out. A vision probably a little optimistic and idealized compared to reality. Cut! also slightly forces in its finale on the good feelings around group cohesion and the complicity finally found between a father and his daughter. But Michel Hazanavicius’ approach remains honest and coherent. And what does it matter, basically, that unlike Shin’ichirō Ueda the Frenchman had real means, it doesn’t take anything away from the fun of the whole thing, quite the contrary.
Cut! by Michel Hazanavicius, in theaters on May 17, 2022. Above the trailer. Find all our trailers here. The film opened the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
